Associates: Dr. Niklas Ihlssen, Dr. Emilia Leszkowicz
Students: George Zacharopolous
Like any sets of beliefs and preferences, values are implemented in the architecture and function of our brains, and value change operates through changes in neural structure and function. Nonetheless, the neuroscience of value orientation is still uncharted territory.
This project addresses this issue using an innovative integration of social science methods with neuroscience. As a starting point, Phase 1 of this project is using fMRI to map out the brain systems that are engaged when people reflect on values, testing whether the organisation at the neural level reflects the circumplex organisation that has been proposed by Schwartz (1992), as described below (Research Methods and Sources). Recent brain imaging research suggests that links between this model and areas of the brain associated with reward sensitivity are plausible and important (Brosch, Coppin, Scherer, Schwartz, & Sander, 2011; Brosch, Goppin, Schwartz, & Sander, 2011), and Maio and Linden have started pilot work adapting Maio’s experimental paradigms for use with fMRI, capitalising on methods developed by Linden for social comparison research (Lindner, Hundhammer, Ciaramidaro, Linden, & Mussweiler, 2008). This aim is crucial because Schwartz’s model has become highly significant for predicting automatic, subconscious conflicts between values (Maio, Pakizeh, Cheung, & Rees, 2009), and evidence at the neural level would help to corroborate these findings while establishing an important baseline for comparison with the results of Phase 2 in this project.
Subject to further funding, Phase 2 will take our approach one step further by looking at the extent to which manipulated differences in value instantiation trigger changes in the neural correlates of value orientation. These changes will be detected through brain imaging designs executed before and after participants complete tasks that activate and reinforce particular value instantiations, using the most powerful manipulations among those in the research projects examining cognitive and emotional value instantiations. Here we will supplement functional imaging with neurochemical testing (hormones, particularly oxytocin and cortisol, and neurotransmitter metabolites) to test whether the experimental manipulations change basic neurobiological processes and whether baseline levels of pro-social and stress hormones influence the susceptibility to change manipulations. Overall, our integration of psychology and neuroscience will help us to detect differences in how, over time, neural networks respond to values in (a) their abstract form and (b) their concrete instantiations.